It can be expensive to make progress in Splinterlands.

A few hundred bucks isn't a "lot of money" per se, but it's a decent chunk for someone like me. A month of rent, a new computer upgrade, hell, maybe even just a month's worth of weed for my smoking habit, whatever I spend it on, it's easy to balk at putting a few hundred into my card collection for a game.

Which is why I am excited as FUCK to finally go to Peak Monsters and realize: It's SO AFFORDABLE!!

I can have a fully decked out collection to compete for Bronze at the highest level for like, $10 a month or some shit. Maybe less.

I haven't done the hard math on it all -- today is "test the waters day" -- but what's started as trying to rent one card as an experiment, has turned into me massively upgrading my collection.

Let me back up...

Renting Cards on Peak Monsters

At first glance, the Peak Monsters site is overwhelming. I am not a finance guy. I do not attempt to flip assets for a profit, all these numbers just stress me out.

After a little bit of troubleshooting and trial-and-error, I am able to get a feel for the system. All I have to do is use the right-side column to filter my options and search for the cards I am interested in renting.

What to search for? Well, I've been needing Malric for a long time.

He's much stronger than Pyre, but unfortunately I invested in Pyre early on and have been losing all kinds of fire splinter match-ups ever since. NO MORE!! Let's rent one at Level 3+ so I never have a problem again.

Again, tons of numbers, but the main thing is that it is very affordable. It'll cost me less than a dollar to rent out a Malric for an entire month.

At first the "rent" button does not work. Every other button is fine, but that one gives me a "go fuck yourself" kind of mouse cursor and doesn't respond when I click. This leads to some mild troubleshooting rage until I realize I need to transfer some of my HBD into Peakcredits or whatever, yet another token, that's how it goes.

Transfer is very very easy, one of my favorite things about Hive. Everything is fast and affordable, no transaction traffic jams here. SO GOOD!! I add five bucks from my HBD wallet.

I'm in pure "Play 2 Earn" mode -- my blog earnings fund my game purchases, which then allow me to earn better rewards and write more interesting posts, the flywheel of content on Hive.

Here's the "rental contract" for Malric.

After rental, I check my collection. If I look at my "playable" tab, there he is!! MALRIC IS AVAILABLE AT LEVEL 4!!

If I look at the "owned" tab, I do not see the Malric. That's because I don't own it, I am only renting it -- so it is playable, but not owned.

I love it. It's so exciting, making the Splinterlands world look more affordable and viable as a play-to-earn game than ever.

Final Thoughts

Ok I was planning on sharing a featured match in this post as well but it's already been a lot of info. I will cap today's post here and share some updates on my quest for Bronze Top 20 in the next few days...

My final thoughts are simple: IF YOU WANT TO WIN IN SPLINTERLANDS, YOU GOTTA USE PEAK MONSTERS!! Renting cards is the key to making all the other aspects of the ecosystem connect together. With rentals, play-to-earn is really possible. Renting also makes the game more fun.

Hell. Yes. I love it.

Do you use Peak Monsters? Or, do you NOT use it but you are thinking about it? Let me know where you are at and please ask if you have any questions, I cannot emphasize enough how much this is the key to "getting good" at splinterlands.